Fat Washing Cocktails. Booze With a Bit of Dripping

Old Fashioned

Ever looked at a bottle of bourbon and thought to yourself, this needs Bacon! If you haven't and you like to stay on trend, you’re about to. Fat washing is one of those cocktail trends that sounds a bit dodgy until you actually try it. You take some booze, add a bit of artery hardener like bacon fat, butter, duck fat or even coconut oil if you’re feeling tropical. Then let it sit around for a bit before you whack it in the freezer. The fat hardens, you scoop it out and what you’re left with is pure liquid gold. Smooth, rich, a little bit cheeky. Strangely, it is both odd and rather delicious, and we have always been a fan in bacon in anything.

The result isn’t greasy or weird like a half arsed TikTok cooking hack. It’s silky. It’s decadent. It tastes like your drink’s been hanging out at the butcher’s, nicked a bit of smoked pork hock and come back more confident.

Bacon washed bourbon is the classic, if something can be a classic so soon. Add it to an Old Fashioned and suddenly you’re sipping on smoke and salt and a hint of the bbq. You may ask yourself if you should be ashamed of enjoying it this much. Spoiler - you shouldn’t. Then there’s brown butter rum, which tastes like drinking an Anzac biscuit upgraded to business class. Or coconut oil washed gin, perfect for when your G&T wants to ditch the suburbs and live in Byron. I didn't like this as much, it was more reef oil on main beach in Surfers Paradise but we had to give it a go.

Fat washed

Next up was some Rye whisky washed with duck fat. Fancy, a little elegant and it kind of made our Manhattan feel like it’s got a private school education and a trust find. We also experimented with sesame oil vodka? A bit left of field, sure, but just no. This was a bridge too far.

The best part of all of this is you can do it at home with whatever’s in your kitchen. Fry up some good quality bacon, pour off the fat mix it into your spirit, wait a few hours, freeze it, strain it and Bob’s your boozy uncle. You don’t need a lab coat or a topknot. Just a sense of adventure and a blatant disregard for your arteries.

Fat Washed Vokda

So next time someone offers you a neat pour of something special, ask if it has been fat-washed? If not, it’s just regular booze and you, my friend, deserve much better.